Revised Twisted Reality Book 1: Trials
by JediGuy1490
Summary: The revised edition of Twisted Reality, the already-popular forum-based fanfiction! Follow a salvage team a they brave the harsh conditions of a post-nuclear apocalypse, both those outside of and within their walls. Monsters exist, but on which side?


Prologue

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A small, sudden beeping made Yamin jump for a moment, her heart fluttering before she realized it was just the 'incoming call' signal on her walkie-talkie. She reached down to her hip for the small, wire-frame headset and unhooked it from its perch, sliding the receiver piece into her elongated, highly-sensitive, wolf-like ear. Casey, one of her teammates, managed a rare snicker, shaking his head tiredly as he took a seat on a piece of rotted wood, probably some form of fencing that had once kept trespassers away. "Korin was right, you really _are_ jumpy when you're out here."

Yamin gave a small '_tsk_,' shaking her head as she adjusted the tightness on the headset. "Oh, bite me," she said, swatting him playfully across the face with her tail. He made a few sputtering sounds, a loose hair on his shirt, and the wolf smiled at the small victory. She thumbed the 'on' button, adjusting the microphone so that it hovered an inch away from her mouth. "Yaz here, go ahead."

The receiver gave a burst of static for a moment, white noise scratching at the wolf's ear drums before a voice broke through the haze. "Yaz, it's Kosh." His voice was muffled and scratched by the static, but he spoke loud enough to bludgeon his way through the audio barrier. "I lost eyesight of Mikey and Jacen when they rounded into the east silo field, and that was about ten minutes ago. I can't raise 'em on the talkie, either."

_ 'Just great,' _ Yamin thought, sighing. "You sure they didn't just slip out the far side?" She pressed the recieved a little farther into her ear, holding her hand against it as she looked up to the crest of the tallest of the western grain silos. She could somewhat make out Kosh's form, the Keidran sharpshooter scanning the far end of the deserted grain processing center through his scope.

"If they did, it wouldn't explain why they're not answering their earpiece." She could've sworn the he cussed into the mouthpiece, but he'd never admit to it; it could've just as easily been the static making her hear things.

"I don't know, maybe all the metal bounces the signal around. Hell, ours is bad enough, and we're in eyesight."

"Could be a bit of electrical interference, there's a storm on the way." Even as he said that, the air shook with the distant, gentle rumble of thunder. Yamin and Casey both looked onto the far horizon, grey storm clouds hanging ominously. Rain was rare these days, but when it did come, it always came with a fury. The Kaidran shook her head slightly as thunder rumbled again, a faint flash sparking inside of a cloud. There was almost as much lightning as there was water during the storms, and it was a _very_ bad idea to be caught out-of-doors, not to mention the fact that they were surrounded by tall, metallic objects. "We should find them and call for pickup. You know how I hate getting my fur wet."

"Duly noted. Go ahead and put the call in, Casey and I will go find the love birds." She said the last part with a chuckle, playing along with a common joke amongst the three of them that Jacen and Mikey spent so much time together that they just _had_ to be gay. Something was mumbled into the headset, and she pressed against the earpiece. "Say again, Kosh? You're breaking up."

"I said I'll get on it. _Kresh ni-vor_."

Yamin felt her face flush a little and couldn't help but let a small smile form on her face. He switched to Keidrani out of habbit, because the phrase that he spoke didn't have an equivalent in the human language. In essence, it meant 'all my heart,' a reasonable analogue to 'I love you.' She glanced at Casey, who was picking at something on his boot, and was greatful that he didn't know Keidrani. "_Kresh ital mai," _she said, completing the traditional phrase as she cut the connection. The full phrase, '_Kresh ni-vor al ital mai_,' was spoken only to those who held true feeling for each other in the Keidran language, roughly translated as meaning 'I give all of my heart and soul.' She gazed up at the wolf as he gathered his equipment and started making his way down from his perch. They had been seeing each other for a few months -- a long time in any Keidran's life -- and she wondered if he was going to take the next step. Shaking her head clear, she put the headset back onto her hip, strapping it down. '_Now's not the time...,'_ she thought to herself, sighing and tapping Casey with her foot. "Well," Yamin said, C'mon. We've got to go find 'em."

Casey rolled his eyes and stood up, shaking the dust from his pants. "Isn't this, like, the third time they've wandered off like this on a trip?" the short, red-haired youth of twenty-something asked. He leaned down and grabbed the small medical satchel that he carried with him, filled with various field-trauma supplies. They wouldn't fix things permanently, just long enough to either move the unfortunate victim back to a field hospital or to make them comfortable until time ran its course, but sometimes it was the iconography that reassured people. "I mean, you'd think they'd have enough common sense to stay somewhere where we could at least radio them."

He had a point, Yamin knew, and she had expected better from Jacen, her hand-picked second-in-command on these outings for supplies. With a small shrug, she gave him a little, helpless frown. "I'll make sure I set them straight when we get back to camp, alright? Let's just find them and get out of here, my feet are killing me." She and Casey began walking down the ground-up dirt road that made up the main artery through the storage area, one that was apparently well traveled judging from the still-visible tire tracks of heavy hauling equipment. Hefting her shotgun, a dusty, dinged-up SPAS 12-gague, Yaz looked down into her chest pocket and counted how many shells she had left. Not a lot, but enough for now. Glancing behind her, she saw Casey following her while looking up at the sky, absent-mindedly fiddling with his pistol's holster. She looked up as well, wondering if there was anything in particular that he was spotting. The sky was a twisted, warped dome of dull reds, bright oranges, and sickly greens, due in part from all of the radiation in the upper atmosphere. Sighing, Yamin kept walking, thinking of that not-so-long-ago time when one could look up and see blue and white.

"Jacen! Mikey! Where are you guys!?" Yaz continued to yell out as they neared and eventually entered the large silo field, scanning her eyes across the dulled surfaces for any sign of movement or sound. All she got back was her own voice, dulled and echoed amongst the silos themselves or the vast distance of the wastelands outside of the storage area. She shook her head, swearing aloud. "When I get my hands on those two..." she said with a low, dangerous voice, and left the sentence unfinished. She vaguely became aware of the fact that the ground around them was damp, the dirt quickly becoming solid rather than wispy."Chemical leak?" she asked aloud, looking down and not being able to tell what exactly it was that was covering the ground. She turned back to look at Casey, taking a few more steps before she began feeling a puddle with her feet. She looked down, confused for a moment, before looking a few feet farther. She let out a small scream, clasping her hands over her muzzle in startled shock, as she saw Mikey and Jacen, their bodies torn apart and lying on the ground.

"Holy _shit_," Casey said, ducking around Yamin and quickly running over to the corpses, flinging his medical satchel onto the ground without a care that it could be soaked in the small blood puddle. He knew he wouldn't find a pulse, but still pressed his index and middle finger into the crux of their jaws. Casey leaned in closer to inspect the wounds. A cut here, a scratch there -- ones that were rough and jagged, not smooth like a knife. Shaking his head with a sigh, he looked up at Yamin. "Afterdead got 'em. They might still be close." Yamin just stood there, shaking her head with her eyes closed. She gently bit her knuckle, a heavy, almost explosive sigh that could've been a sob slipping between her teeth. Silently, Casey reached over to close Jacen's eyes, only to freeze when he noticed something wasn't right. The eyes were staring back at him.

"Oh, hell."

Jacen lurched up and grabbed the man's arm, blood still slowly oozing from a wound in his own neck. Yaz screamed, stumbling as she tried to take a step backward when her heel hit a piece of piping. With his free hand, Casey tried to pull his pistol out of its holster, but Jacen's maw opened and the man's teeth sunk into Casey's forearm before he could. Yelling in agony, Casey pulled away, leaving a mound of flesh and muscle in Jacen's mouth. Mikey, sickly pale and bloodied, reached across his fallen comrade and grabbed Casey's boot, pulling him down into a messy, bloody dog-pile.

"Casey!" Yamin screamed, scrambling on all fours to her shotgun, which had skittered a few feet away when she fell. In only that matter of seconds, there were more screams, the world seeming to move both intensely fast and unbearably slow at the same time.

"Run!" Casey said, finally freeing his pistol from its holster and turning it towards Mikey. His former-friend's pale, bloody face looked at the barrel of the M9, though his eyes stared past it and straight at Casey, who pulled the trigger. The ricochet slammed the grip back into Casey's palm, while also sending flesh, blood, and bits of brain onto the pavement. He tried to turn to Jacen, but Jacen was already up, and he grabbed Casey by the shoulder and pulled. Casey used his pistol to bash the side of Jacen's face away, giving a nasty sideswipe with the barrel, before he aimed the gun at his forehead, squeezing the trigger again. Jacen went limp, falling to the ground. Casey looked back, and saw a few bloody footprints scratched into the dirt. Yamin had heeded his warning, leaving him in the midst of two, once-again dead, corpses. Looking down at his mauled left arm, he could see plenty of blood pouring out of it. Casey slowly turned his face up toward the sky, then brought the M9 to his temple. Sighing, he added one more corpse to the pile.

Yamin was half-panting, half-crying as she sprinted towards the center of the storage facility, logic giving way to pure fear. She didn't check her corners, she didn't make sure to keep quiet, she just _ran_. Her gear and pouches were swinging to and fro with each large bound, jostling against her with a faint ringing sound. A faint voice was coming from somewhere near her hip, and she realized mid-stride that someone was yelling over the radio. She held the SPAS one-handed by the grip and kept running, the other pressing the small receiver against her ear. She didn't even bother trying to put it on correctly. "Yaz! Answer me, damnit, what's going on?! What were those shots?!" It was Kosh, who sounded almost as panicked as she was.

"They're dead," she managed to scream, still running, "They're all dead! Afterdead!"

"Fuck, tell me something I don't know! I saw one of them go around the far side of the silo when you and Casey went back there, I've been trying to warn you!" From the sound of his breath and the faint wind coming in through the broadcast, it was obvious that he was running, too. "I'm almost there, the truck should be here any -- OH SHIT!"

"Kosh? Kosh!?" Yaz yelled frantically, stumbling in her sprint to an eventual stop. She pressed the receiver further into her ear, a gesture that did nothing but clarify the screams coming through the headset.

"Get the FUCK away from me! N-NO! Gah-AHH! AUUGHH! Grrn-....You ugly mother- _***Bang-Bang Bang***_

Yamin broke down when the gunshots echoed in the distance, weeping hysterics as she crumbled to her knees. "Kosh! _**KOSH!....**_PLEASE....." She started hyperventilating, her breath coming in great, sobbing spasms as she screamed into the headset. Only movement in the corner of her eye made her stumble to her feet, clutching her shotgun in one hand and the headset in the other. A single Afterdead stumbled behind her, one hand outstretched as if he were beckoning her to join her comrades. She shrieked from both agony and anger and swung the gun around one-handed, blasting both the thing's face apart and the gun back into her body. A sick, splattering noise followed a moment later when the body collapsed, decapitated and twitching. She stumbled towards the field house, a small, square hut of a building that resided nearby. She hobbled inside, bracing a frail metal chair against the inward-opening door as best as she could. The Keidran collapsed into a sobbing heap, cradling the gun in her lap as the noise outside grew louder. She brought the headset up to her face one more time, tuning into the emergency broadcast channel. She stuttered at first, wheezing, before she was able to cry out a small message. "Th-this is Y-Yamin from....from Scavenger Group C....Someone, s-send help, please...." Tears began to stain her cheeks as the nosie outside grew almost unbearable, fists beginning to pound against the door and it's barrier. She closed her eyes and pressed herself as hard as she could against the back corner, pumping another shell into her shotgun. She began repeating the small phrase over and over again, even as the sounds of the door being slowly beaten away became louder and louder.

"Please....help."


End file.
